Teacher Discussion Forums

I wouldn't like to say if examples like 'The President's been shot!' and 'Somebody's shot the President!' are quite the same (probably the former would be the one uttered more frequently, were presidents being shot every five minutes and a corpus of such utterances thus building up), but I was struck the oher day by the thought that 'Some moron/b*st*rd/**** stole my bike/nicked my parking space etc' would make a perfectly valid alternative to 'My bike was stolen/?My parking space was nicked etc' (and a third version, 'Somebody stole my bike/nicked my parking space etc' is OK but seems kind of wishy-washy).

Has this more expressive (that is, more emotionally loaded, affective; effective?) alternative been mentioned anywhere in "the literature"? And do you have any examples (other than to do with active versus passive) tha you'd like to add to this thread?

Me thinks all emotions boil down to the use of active versus passive.

I don't know if it's an example, but I've been hearing the phrase "Here's the thing" a lot lately. I'd say it has an emotional subtext of sorts, as it invites the listener to somehow "come closer and hear THIS."

It just occurred to me that this phrase might really confuse a non-native speaker. "Where's the thing? WHAT thing?"

Hi

'The President's been shot!' and 'Somebody's shot the President!'

If the President of the US had just been shot, I seriously doubt that any American would run around emotionally using the present perfect to announce it.


I also think the active is much more emotional than the passive. Using the passive tends to sound just that way --- passive and detached. But, I'd say using the "get" passive would be more likely that the "standard" passive form in an emotional situation. "My ***** bike got stolen!."

Some moron/b*st*rd/****...

Returning to the presidential example, the above format sounds like a good, emotional start to me. As to the particular choice of nouns following "some", I guess that might depend a little on whether you liked the President or not...

Amy

I agree that it is a matter of passive voice more than anything. Might be a good time to bring up when passive voice is used.